RICE, JABEZ MELVILLE (1876-1960)

RICE, JABEZ MELVILLE, United Church minister, Millerton, 1939-46; b. Hamilton, Ont., 10 Jan 1876, s/o Stephen Henry Rice and Mary Jane Pollard; brother of Henry Clarence Rice; m. 1904, Winnifred Woods (a d/o J. B. Woods, postmaster general of Newfoundland); d. Newcastle, 25 Nov 1960.

Jabez M. Rice was educated at Mount Allison University (BA 1898), where he excelled in football and track and field. Ordained in 1902, he ministered at half a dozen locations in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island for the Methodist church and at Marysville, Bathurst, and Millerton for the United Church of Canada. It was stated that his sermons were always illustrative of "some high and worthy principle."

Rice retired at Millerton in 1948 and served for a time as chairman of the local school board. In 1954 he was granted an honorary DD by Pine Hill Divinity Hall. He and his wife, Winnifred Woods, had four children, one of whom was the Campbellton physician J. H. Melville Rice.